Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Pure Excess
Capitalism and the Commodity
-
Todd McGowan
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2024
About this book
Todd McGowan forges a new theory of capitalism as a system based on the production of more than what we need: pure excess.
Author / Editor information
Todd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Embracing Alienation, The Racist Fantasy, Emancipation After Hegel, Capitalism and Desire, and Only a Joke Can Save Us, among other books. He is also the cohost of the Why Theory podcast with Ryan Engley.
Reviews
Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism:
This crystalline study perfects the psychoanalytic critique of contemporary omnicrisis. As Todd McGowan builds a new analysis of the place of aesthetic form in a culture of excess, he shows how art’s constraints model an excess attained through rather than despite lack, and thus educate anticapitalist desire.
This crystalline study perfects the psychoanalytic critique of contemporary omnicrisis. As Todd McGowan builds a new analysis of the place of aesthetic form in a culture of excess, he shows how art’s constraints model an excess attained through rather than despite lack, and thus educate anticapitalist desire.
Alenka Zupančič, author of What IS Sex?:
In his latest groundbreaking work, Todd McGowan provides a thrilling examination of the nature of excess in capitalism. Much more than a critical analysis of capitalism, this book also reveals the anticapitalist potential of art and the aesthetic form.
Slavoj Žižek:
For years McGowan has worked to understand the core mechanism of the libidinal economy that sustains capitalism. With Pure Excess, we finally have the definitive formulation. He condenses deep paradoxes: capitalism produces pure excess even when most people cannot satisfy their basic needs. This book is obligatory reading for everyone who wants to understand the global crisis we are in.
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
CONTENTS
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ix -
Requires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
INTRODUCTION Excessively Yours
1 -
Requires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1 THE APOTHEOSIS OF USELESSNESS
31 -
Requires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2 AN OBJECTIVE EXCESS
67 -
Requires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3 TWO FORMS OF FETISHISM
91 -
Requires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4 THE INDEBTED SERVANT
121 -
Requires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5 THE REASONABLE PARANOIAC
149 -
Requires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6 PORTRAIT OF THE ANTICAPITALIST AS AN ARTIST
173 -
Requires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
NOTES
199 -
Requires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
INDEX
243
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 20, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780231561808
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780231561808
Audience(s) for this book
Professional and scholarly;
